Tripoli: Ali Ahmed has been part of Syria's revolution from the beginning.

But it was only after he watched his father and uncle die before his eyes, savagely cut down in an air strike, that he became a killer.

Nineteen-year-old Abu Saleh, who lost both his legs in the battle for Qusayr in Syria, in a wheelchair in a hospital in Lebanon. Photo: Fadi Yeni Turk

"After that I just wanted revenge," the 26-year-old says, and calmly lists the battles he has fought in the year-and-a-half since their deaths: Qalamon, outside Damascus; along the supply route between Idlib and Aleppo; in Homs and, his last, the horrific fight to secure the strategic town of Qusayr.

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The first battalion he tried to join was not interested in his plans to avenge the deaths of his loved ones. The next welcomed him and since then he's been responsible for firing rocket-propelled grenades or RPGs – the shoulder-fired, anti-tank weapon – at the forces of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The death of his sister six months ago – an air strike hit her neighbour's house while she was next door having coffee, killing her instantly – only strengthened his resolve.

Ahmad Berro, who just arrived at Tripoli Public Hospital, was injured in the fighting between pro-and anti-regime fighters in the Syrian Chrisitian village of Malula. Photo: Fadi Yeni Turk

"Killing is now a normal act for me," says the married father of a one-year-old daughter. "It is impossible for me to think that this anger will ever disappear after all the horror I have seen."

It was as he was preparing to fire an RPG at an advancing column of three Syrian regime tanks outside Qusayr that he was hit — a tank shell landed near him and fragments pierced his legs and chest.

His battalion – Al-Haq Islami Jihadi or the Righteous Islamic Jihad – suffered significant losses in the months-long battle for Qusayr, which ended in early June. What once was a unit of 375 fighters has been reduced to 250, he says.

It is now preparing to launch another offensive to take back control of Qusayr, regrouping outside Damascus with men, weapons and supplies.

Ali is speaking to Fairfax Media from his hospital bed in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, his shattered right leg held together with an external bolt that travels almost the length of his femur.

Injured opposition fighters fill two floors of the hospital, many with large metal frames bolted into the skin of their broken arms or legs, while others are facing life without the limbs they lost in the brutal war that has raged for more than two years.

Those who have made it to Lebanon have inevitably faced agonising, often days-long journeys to safety, says the Dar al-Zahraa Hospital's general manager Nasr Maamari.

"If they stay alive long enough to reach the border, they will eventually find their way here," Mr Maamari says.

Evacuation points have been established with the help of the International Red Cross and other agencies, he says, but the trip is as tough as it gets.

Ali Ahmed's journey from Qusayr to Tripoli lasted six days, where he was moved from village to village, culminating in a brief stint in Hezbollah custody where he says he was tortured, his already painful wounds and broken bones hit with rifle buts to intensify his agony.

"My wounds were open, they became infected, there was a lot of pain," he says with the quiet understatement that informs the entire interview.

His battalion, a conservative group independent of the Free Syrian Army that operates under the umbrella of the ultra-conservative Syrian Islamic Front, may not necessarily be aligned with what appears to be his more moderate way of thinking.

But it is also not as radical as some of the brigades and has not embraced suicide attacks like the more radical Al-Qaeda-linked groups, so to Ali, it is where he belongs. He intends to return to the battalion when his leg heals.

In a room down the hall, two young men are talking quietly. Nineteen-year-old Abu Saleh from the village of Abel, near Qusayr, is in a wheelchair, one leg missing below the knee, one leg above the knee, and his right hand damaged from a blast.

The other, who we cannot identify, lies still in his bed. He arrived at the hospital only one day ago but his protracted journey from Homs to Tripoli has left him with a serious back injury and no feeling in his legs. It is clear his prognosis is not good.

"We had been called to defend a road leading to a small village next to Qusayr, we sandbagged it and were preparing to protect it," Abu Saleh says.

His small unit of 10 Free Syrian Army fighters was attacked – three died instantly, others were seriously wounded.

He is due to be fitted with prosthetic limbs soon, and says as soon as possible he will re-join his unit.

"If I cannot fight, then I will work in other ways, I will do logistics or cook for my brigade," he says, echoing the desire of many of the injured to return immediately to the battlefield, the unfinished dream of the Syrian revolution still burns bright.

"We did all this for Syria, for our democracy," Abu Saleh says.

As the US Congress prepares to debate military intervention – in response to the Assad regime's chemical weapons attack on August 21 – the war inside Syria rages with an average of 100 deaths each day. These losses add to the more than 100,000 the United Nations estimates have died in the conflict since it began in 2011.

Add to that, the number of Syrian refugees fleeing the intensified violence and lack of food, water and electricity has doubled in the last six months and now surpassed 2 million, while those internally displaced numbers at more than 5 million, the UN says.

At a public hospital a few kilometres away, the casualties from the latest battle have arrived.

Ahmad Berro lies in his bed twitching in pain, his leg missing part of the femur bone from a blast injury he sustained a day ago in a battle between opposition forces and regime soldiers in the ancient Christian town of Malula, north-east of Damascus.

After two of his brothers were killed in regime strikes in Baba Amr in 2012, the 24-year-old former regime policeman defected to the Free Syrian Army and has fought alongside them ever since.

He, too, is keen to return to his unit.

But the wait could be longer than he anticipates. Doctors estimate it will take at least eight months for his shattered femur to heal, and no one knows what state Syria will be in by then.